Macedonian is the official administrative language of the Republic of Macedonia, wedged between Yugoslavia, Bultgaria, Greece, and Albania. It is used in all matters of the state as well as in international functions. It is spoken by about 70 percent of the country's population, or 1½ million people. Macedonian is closely related to Bulgarian, and is considered by some (especially the Bulgarians) to be merely a dialect of that language. The alphabet contains the unique r' and k', not to be found in any other language.

For us, a nation which has succeeded in formulating its literary language in the course of the last few decades, it would be very instructive to know the nature of the fundamental characteristics of the development of literary languages in the Slavic world. It would be particularly instructive in that we would find in that development a number of analogies to what has happened in our own case, and we would be able to note certain correspondences, whereas otherwise it might appear that certain phenomena arise solely out of our own particular situation.